Part 6 in the "Time for Answers from Councilor DiBello" series
There are lots of reasons why I think Lisa DiBello has been a terrible Town Council member. Topping the list, of course, is her $1.5 million conspiracy lawsuit against Charlestown, the only time in memory a sitting Council member has ever filed suit against the municipality he or she claims to serve.
The other major reason is DiBello's consistent refusal to follow the rules requiring public accountability. This goes back to her days as a town employee, when she was persistently late filing her annual ethics disclosure forms, and her failure to ever file annual reports on time for her charity, A Ray of Hope, with the Secretary of State. Twice, the charity's corporate charter was revoked due to failure to file reports.
DiBello has not disclosed, and may not have ever filed, IRS-990 reports on that charity with IRS. Those forms are the only way for donors and members of the public to know whether a charity is using its money properly.
And now, running for election for the second time, there is this from the RI Board of Elections....
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Note the "PAST DUE" notation for the report all candidates were required to file last Tuesday.
This is not the first time DiBello has done this with the Board of Elections. In 2010, she filed the report that was due seven days before the election two weeks after the election (see the graph above – report due 10/26/10, report received 11/19/10). She was cited for the violation by the Board of Elections.
If you take each one of the dozens of occasions in which DiBello has flouted the rules, they don't seem like such a big deal. What's three weeks, or three months, or ten years late in the global scheme of things? But they all add up to paint a picture of Lisa DiBello as a person who simply doesn't think the rules that apply to everyone else apply to her.
But, for consistency, I give her high marks.
Read the "It's time for answers from DiBello" series:
For Part 1, click here
For Part 2, click here For Part 3, click here
For Part 4, click here
For Part 5, click here
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